Critic Reviews

Leslie Dixon’s script is effective, though sometimes seems stranded between the domestic humour and the big issues being played out. Still, engaging, undemanding stuff.

Veteran Arthur Hiller, who directed Peter Falk and Alan Arkin in The In-Laws and Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder in Silver Streak, proves equally adept at managing a female odd couple.

Midler and Long are great together, and the dialogue is hilarious. [22 Nov 1987, p.11]

Outrageous Fortune is well crafted, old-fashioned entertainment that takes some conventional elements, shines them up and repackages them as something new and contemporary.

Long and Midler are so good they almost make us forget that Outrageous Fortune is yet another elaborate chase movie with the usual comic CIA and KGB stooges and vast, familiar stretches of Southwestern deserts.

It works because Miss Midler and Miss Long are hilarious, both separately and together. Another thing that works is Leslie Dixon's screenplay, which has energy, wit and a supreme confidence that's just this side of bluster.

The plot is madcap nonsense, and the comic aim is sometimes very broad and very low, but the belly-laugh quotient in Arthur (The In-Laws) Hiller's movie is the highest since the last Midler movie, Ruthless People. [26 Jan 1987, p.76]

The one full-fledged inspiration of Outrageous Fortune is the pairing of Long and Midler into a team that adds up to even more than the sum of its parts.

Midler has emerged as the best funny woman on the screen. As Sandy, she makes abrasiveness appealing. But her work here can't compare with what she did in Down and Out in Beverly Hills and Ruthless People. Neither can Outrageous Fortune. [30 Jan 1987, p.D1]

The two women seem genuinely comfortable with each other, and it shows in their unselfishness and timing in a film that moves from verbal humor to slapstick. [30 Jan 1987, p.4D]